Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Hitt, Associate Professor of Radiology and Interim Division Chief of Breast Imaging, and her Co-Director Loretta Muss, N.C. Cancer Hospital Patient & Family Advisory Council Coordinator, on receiving a 大象传媒 Gillings School of Public Health Capstone Grant!
 |
 |
The master鈥檚 capstone is a year-long service-learning course that gives our students an opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills gained in the first year of the program by working in teams partnered with community-based organizations to address real-world public health problems.
CAPSTONE
- Increases our students鈥� and partner organizations鈥� capacity to address public health problems, and their social determinants and promote health equity.
- Creates new and/or improved public health policies, programs, services, and resources.
- Enhances student marketability.
- Strengthens campus/community partnerships.
“Together, we will be working on community health education and patient and caregiver advisor recruitment,” says Dr. Hitt. “We will be partnering a 大象传媒 clinician and a patient or caregiver with a community group for dialogue to encourage increased healthcare understanding and utilization. For example, I will co-present about breast health with a breast cancer patient to a local women鈥檚 group. There are many other opportunities for radiologists to get involved. Not only is it an important element of the Patient and Caregiver Centered Initiative, that we are proposing for 大象传媒 Health, but it is also part of the radiology outreach strategy led by Paul Marini and Charles Burke.”
The four Masters of Public Health Students who will be working on project include:
Asia Carter
Asia Carter is a graduate student studying public health in the Department of Health Behavior at 大象传媒 Chapel-Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.聽Her research interests include addressing structural determinants of health to improve health outcomes for underserved communities and advance health equity. She will be serving as the co-president for the Minority Student Caucus at Gillings advocating and uplifting the voices of students of color in the School of Public Health. She also will be a graduate teaching assistant in the health behavior department and a program assistant for the Bachelor of Science in Public Health Program at 大象传媒. Asia has worked on several community-engaged research projects and has served as a community organizer advocating for patients鈥� and communities鈥� reproductive rights.
I am looking forward to working on this project with 大象传媒 Health Care because it is a new initiative with a lot of room for creativity and innovative approaches to include the patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives.
Chase Myers
When thinking about working with the 大象传媒 Patient and Caregiver Centered Initiative, I am most excited about applying the skills I have learned throughout this past year at Gillings School of Global Public Health. I have been involved with a year-long project regarding sexual health education among women with intellectual and developmental disabilities, so I have valuable experience to offer in terms of centering patient and caregiver voices when developing and assessing health improvement programs. I look forward to emphasizing accessibility and equity during this project as we work to improve health outcomes in local North Carolina communities.
Natalie Hairston
Natalie Hairston is a native of Eden, NC. She elects to respond to she, her pronouns. In 2011 she relocated to Greensboro, NC where she pursued a Bachelor of Science in Public Health Education and a minor in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Currently, she has enrolled in a master-level dual degree program in Public Health and Social Work concentrating on health equity, social justice and human rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her professional experience is in infectious diseases and sexual health. Although her background is in sexual health, her public health interest is to address systems of oppression through incorporating and modeling forms of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within policy development.
I am looking forward to starting the 大象传媒 Patient Caregiver Centered Initiative (PCCI) Capstone Project. For the PCCI Capstone Project, I am interested in engaging in patient advocacy, community engagement, and outreach to better understand the needs of this community to create more inclusion and to strategize to develop more community-driven projects.
Lilly O’Toole
Lilly O鈥橳oole is a Research Assistant in the Re-Envisioning Health & Justice Lab. She received her B.S. in Public Health from The Ohio State University in 2021 and is currently a first-year MPH student in Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina鈥檚 Gillings School of Public Health. Lilly鈥檚 interests are ever-evolving but lie primarily within transformative justice, prevention-based healthcare, global health, and health disparities. She hopes to use the social determinants of health to uproot our current capitalist 鈥渉ealth鈥� care system and lay the foundation for one based on equity, community, and the biopsychosocial model.